Disc drives are generally manufactured in mass volume. Final assembly of the disc drive's internal components into a case as typically seen by a consumer is usually performed in a clean room, with the associated circuit board(s) added as a final physical assembly step (except for application of any labels). After the final assembly, the disc drives are typically transferred to a disc drive testing system which performs a multitude of processing operations that may include testing, loading control software, and initial configuration of the disc drives. Much of the handling of disc drives within the testing system is robotic. As potentially-realizable intra-machine test times decrease, the physical speed limitations of robot movement prevent disc drive manufacturers from actually realizing these reduced processing times. In other words, advances in disc drive and data storage device testing allows shorter test times; however, the handling robots of many testing systems cannot handle (move) the data storage devices fast enough to allow the shorter test times to be realized in the overall throughput of the systems. Reduction of cost is an important element of electronics manufacture, and the inability to achieve lower test times due to mechanical limitations of the robotic components is a significant obstacle to continued manufacturing cost reduction. Traditionally, the data storage devices are manipulated by a robot and inserted into one or more individual process-operation sites. However, robot speed constraints and the required travel distances by the robots currently limit the overall throughput of the process machinery, whose individual-site process speed capabilities, as well as numbers, are increasing.